Junk food, junk statistics

A shock report in the Guardian highlights claims of the immense cost to the British economy of health problems resulting from poor diets.

The UK’s growing addiction to unhealthy food costs £268bn a year, far outstripping the budget for the whole NHS, the first research into the subject has found. The increased consumption of foods high in fat, salt and sugar or which have been highly processed is having a “devastating” impact on human health and Britain’s finances.

“Far from keeping us well, our current food system, with its undue deference to what is known colloquially as ‘big food’, is making us sick. The costs of trying to manage that sickness are rapidly becoming unpayable,” the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) report says.

The £268bn figure has emerged from the first academic research looking at the cost of Britain’s increasing consumption of food that, according to the government’s system of assessing nutritional quality, is deemed unhealthy.

However, such an astronomical figure immediately raises suspicion that it might be a tad exaggerated, and indeed needs to be taken with a substantial pinch of salt (which of course is bad for you). It also seems to have been subject to considerable inflation, having risen from a claimed £27 billion in 2017 through £98 billion in 2021 to £268 billion now. It also seems a suspiciously exact figure. Why not quote it as £270 billion?

Any figure of costs such as this cannot be taken in isolation, but needs to be compared with something else. The alternative is not doing nothing, but doing something different. In a similar way, figures are often bandied about for the costs to society of using fossil fuels, but fail to consider what the actual result would be from not doing so.

It also commits the frequent sin of public health messaging of failing to acknowledge that people can gain any enjoyment from activities they disapprove of. The fact that people actually enjoy eating burgers and crisps in preference to grilled locusts and steamed kale needs to be considered as a benefit and weighed in the equation.

Christopher Snowdon has looked into this in more depth and reached the unsurprising conclusion that these figures have indeed been plucked out of the air by people with an axe to grind. The Food, Farming and Countryside Commission is not some kind of official body, but a private pressure group run by an individual called Tim Jackson who has a clear anti-capitalist agenda.

In the absence of any firm evidence, Jackson simply assumes that 33% of all long term health conditions in Britain are caused by poor diet because that’s what one study attributed to “metabolic risk”. Metabolic dysfunction is extremely common among the elderly — Jackson says that “70% of adults over 65 suffer from one or more metabolic condition” — and while it is linked to obesity and diet, it is also linked to medication, genes, stress, physical inactivity and other lifestyle factors, as well as old age itself. Jackson ignores the other risk factors and for the purposes of his cost estimate blames every case on “the current food system”.

This makes the maths nice and simple. He takes 70 per cent of what the UK spends on healthcare, social care and disability benefit welfare and divides it by three. This gives him a total of £92 billion in direct costs to the government. He then adds less tangible costs, including “human costs” and lost productivity. “Human costs” depend entirely on whatever arbitrary figure you put on a year of life and are the Get Out of Jail Free card of health economists who want to make it look like personal choices impose a burden on society. Jackson simply nicks the figure of £60 billion from the report commissioned by Tony Blair’s think tank (and paid for by Novo Nordisk) last year.

So, in fact, the figure is entirely made up, and does not deserve to be given any credence. I’m not denying that poor diets do impose some costs on society and the health service, but the real figure is likely to be several orders of magnitude smaller. It is also questionable to what extent this can be addressed through the usual public health playbook of taxes, restrictions and bans. But no doubt it will be gleefully used in future as a stick to beat us with.

And it seems that we are regressing to a medieval worldview where illnesses are blamed on people’s moral failings rather than being attributed to disease and infection.

Bavarian bounty

Last Autumn, there was a bout of excitement on Twitter over the appearance of the Kalea Wiesn-Tragerl ten-pack of Bavarian festival beers as a special offer in Lidl. There was something of a feeding frenzy over trying to get hold of one and, as supplies seemed to be fairly limited, many people were disappointed, including myself.

This year, the same pack made a reappearance, again priced at £24.99 for ten 500ml bottles of beers varying between 5.4% and 6.3% ABV, which is pretty good value, although oddly it was not made available until the middle of October. This time, supplies seemed to be more generous, and I succeeded in getting my hands on one. Having now sampled them all, I thought I would offer some tasting notes.

Boak and Bailey wrote about this pack last year. I’m perhaps rather more enthusiastic about the overall style than they were, but they make the important point that these are beers that very much arise from a particular region and season of the year. Each year, in the early Autumn, towns and cities across Bavaria stage their own folk festival, and the local brewery produces a special beer, stronger than their normal ones, to celebrate. But only the six Munich breweries are allowed to call it “Oktoberfestbier”.

• Bischofshof – Original Festbier (5.4%) BB 14/02/25: Standard mid-gold colour, deep and persistent head, carbonation noticeably less vigorous than some. Relatively crisp flavour, with subdued maltiness and a slight fruity note. One of the better ones, and quite distinctive. Had a more contemporary and stylish label than some of the other more elaborate “Gothic” designs.

• Erl Bräu – Erlkönig Festbier( (6.1%) BB 28/01/25: Pale gold in colour, probably the lightest of the batch, although one of the strongest. Thin but persistent head, vigorous carbonation. Fairly subtle in flavour and not overtly malty, with a dry aftertaste, although a fuller feel developed as it warmed up.

• Ettl Bräu Teisnacher – 1543 Festmärzen (5.4%) BB 03/05/25: This one is labelled as “Naturtrüb”, meaning it still has some yeast in suspension (although not bottle-conditioned). Allowed it plenty of time to settle, and managed to pour with only a mild haze. Dark gold colour, deep head which subsided after a while, but persisted down the glass, strong carbonation. Full, rounded, malty flavour, considerably richer than some of the other beers. I agree with Boak & Bailey that it had “just a dab of welcome rustic character.”

• Falter – Pichelsteiner Festbier (5.9%) BB 28/12/24: Standard golden lager colour, good carbonation but didn’t form a dense head. Characteristic rich, sweetish flavour, with a bit of dry maltiness creeping in later. Good, but not an outstanding example. Possibly a bit lacking in freshness.

• Hofbräu – Oktoberfestbier (6.3%) BB 27/03/25: People may debate the merits of the various Munich Oktoberfestbiers, but surely this is the exemplar of the style. Mid-gold colour, dense, lasting head, vigorous carbonation. Rich, full, malty flavour, but with a distinct dryness there too; not excessively sweet. Splendid stuff!

• Hohenthanner Schlossbrauerei – Märzen Festbier (5.6%) BB 26/03/25: Light copper in colour, more like the traditional Märzen hue. Thin but persistent head, decent carbonation. Sweetish, malty flavour with a hint of caramel.

• Kuchlbauer – Gillamoos Bier (5.6%) BB 01/03/25: Much paler than others, almost Pilsner-pale. Good head formation and vigorous carbonation. Fairly subtle in flavour, less sweet and malty than some. Dry aftertaste. Gillamoos is a folk festival held since 1313 in early September in the town of Abensberg, which is north of Munich and just south of Regensburg.

• Irlbacher Premium – Gauboden Volksfestbier (5.6%) BB 04/07/25: Mid-gold colour, thin but persistent head, good carbonation. Rich flavour, full mouthfeel, but not particularly sweet. Not really the quasi-Pllnsner described by B&B “something like a strong pilsner: pale, powerfully bitter, and our favourite of the bunch”, although still one of the best of the set. One of the latest BB dates.

• Schneider – Festweisse (6.2%) BB 15/03/25: This one differs from the others in being a Hefeweizen, and thus intentionally cloudy. The yeast didn’t come anywhere near settling despite being stood for three weeks. Poured opaque and cloudy, with a thick lasting head and vigorous carbonation. Dark gold colour. Characteristic spicy flavour, with full malt body and a slight alcohol kick. Not, to be honest, one of my favourite beer styles.

• Wildbräu Grafing – Kirtabier (5.7%) BB 03/04/25: Dark gold in colour, which was lighter than I had been expecting from Boak and Bailey’s description. Thin but persistent head, adequate carbonation. Notably sweet and malty flavour, although not heavy; not really lager-like at all. Doesn’t really drink its strength. B&B said: “dark, orangey and syrupy, almost like Spingo Special.”, but this wasn’t really like that at all. It’s paler than the Perlenbacher interpretation. This one had the plainest and simplest label.

I also tried the Perlenbacher Festbier which Lidl were selling at a bargain £1.49 for a 500ml can.

• Perlenbacher – Festbier (5.5%) BB 07/08/25: Dark gold colour, good carbonation and head retention. Malty flavour with little hop character, but a slight “off” note. Probably what you would expect from a cut-price interpretation of a Festbier.

So there you are, ten beers (plus one ersatz knock-off), all basically variations on a theme apart from the Schneider Festweisse. All good beers, and it was interesting to see the differences in flavour and character between them. I’m guessing that most were unpasteurised, hence the shorter shelf-lives, although the Falter was the only one that gave the impression of being a bit stale.

I would certainly buy the pack again if it reappears next year, but it has to be said that Festbiers are an interesting diversion from the core theme of lager, which in general I would expect to be crisper and hoppier. If I had to pick favourites, apart from the Hofbräu, I would choose the Bischofshof and the Irlbacher.

Overall, though, I would say that the Oktoberfest beers from the classic Big 6 Munich breweries are better. And I still have examples of all six of those to drink, bought from the Bottle Stop in Bramhall for a rather higher price per bottle, plus Festbiers from Giesinger and Weihenstephan.

Beat the clock

A central London branch of the O’Neill’s chain has been in the news for imposing a surcharge on drinks prices after 10 pm.

The Soho branch of the Irish-themed pub states on a sign that it operates a “a variable price list” – what that means in reality is that after 10pm, the price it charges for drinks increases.

It is reported that this results in the price of a Brewdog IPA going from £7.40 during the rest of the day to £9.40, while a 500ml bottle of Budweiser goes up from £6.05 to £8.05. Even a tonic water goes up by £1 under the system, with the price rising to £3.15. Drinks purchased in the evening are also served in plastic cups, rather than glass.

This has met with a pretty hostile reaction with consumer rights expert Scott Dixon saying “The hospitality industry needs to rethink their business model instead of inventing new ways to rip people off, there needs to be more transparency.” One commentator even rather hyperbolically declared that it amounted to price gouging and would lead to the extinction of the institution of the pub.

However, provided that it is properly advertised (which reports suggest may not be the case here), is it really any different in principle from pubs offering cheaper prices at slack times, such as “happy hours” or discounts early in the week? Yes, it feels psychologically better to get a discount from what is perceived as the standard price, rather than a surcharge, but the basic concept of varying the price according to the time of day or day of the week is the same.

It is a principle well-established in other markets where pricing of services delivered and consumed immediately is varied according to the time. The most obvious example is peak pricing on the railways, which is directly comparable as the lower price applies most of the time, with a surcharge imposed when it is busy. And it is common, for example, for buffet restaurants to charge several pounds more at weekends for what is exactly the same offer of food.

This practice has been described in some quarters as “surge” or “dynamic” pricing, but that isn’t really accurate. These terms are applied to situations where the price is varied unpredictably in response to the level of demand, such as with the recent furore over Oasis concert tickets. Here, in contrast, the higher price is predictable and announced in advance, and applies to a specific, defined period. The licensing authorities, particularly in Scotland, would take a dim view of any pub that varied prices suddenly and arbitrarily during the course of a single session.

I can’t say I’m very keen on this concept, and I’d think less of any pub that applied it. But time-based pricing is a well-established concept in service businesses, and some of the objections to it seem greatly overdone. Having said that, I’m not sure I’d really be keen on paying £7.40 for a pint of Punk IPA, let alone £9.40.

A morsel for the masses

Well, Budget Day has come and gone, and there has been the usual phenomenon of various unpalatable measures being trailed in advance, and a sigh of relief being breathed when some of them at least are not implemented. There is also usually at least one surprise pulled from the Chancellor’s hat, and this year it was the decision to reduce the rate of duty on draught beer and cider by 1.7%, equating to about 1p on the sale price. The duty on packaged beer and all other alcoholic drinks will increase in line with RPI.

This comes across as a pointless empty gesture that will achieve nothing. Even if pubs see a small reduction in price from their suppliers, in pretty much all cases they will take the entirely understandable decision to slightly widen their margins rather than passing it on to the customer. Virtually no drinkers will see any reduction in the price of a pint over the bar. This was unsurprisingly met with widespread derision, and realistically the optics would have been much better if the rate had simply been frozen. Yet they have the brass neck to shout it from the rooftops as though it is a significant benefit.

Any effect of this will be vastly outweighted by a whole raft of other factors that will increase the costs incurred by pubs. The first is that the 75% discount on business rates that they have enjoyed since the period of lockdowns will be reduced to 40% from April 2025, pending a comprehensive revamp of the system in 2026. This will more than double a pub’s business rates bill. The Morning Advertiser reports that the rates bill for the average pub will increase from £3,938 to £9,451.

The rate of Employer’s National Insurance contributions will be increased from 13.8% to 15%, and the minimum threshold on which they are charged will be reduced from £9,100 to £5,000. This will greatly increase the cost of employing staff, and will hit hospitality, where there are many low-paid and part-time workers, particularly hard. For the very smallest businesses, there will be some relief from raising the exempt band, but the vast majority will still suffer.

Meanwhile, the main adult rate of the National Living Wage is being increased by 6.7%, over three times the rate of inflation, bringing it to £12.21 an hour, while the 18-21 rate will be increased by no less than 11.6% to £10 an hour. Again this will have a particularly severe impact on hospitality due to the profile of their workforce. Some idiot on Twitter opined “why shouldn’t workers be paid a fair wage?”, but you can’t pluck a figure out of the air without any regard to employers’ ability to actually pay it.

On top of this, the government are planning to implement changes in employment law to give workers full rights from Day 1, which will make it much more difficult to dismiss unsatisfactory employees, and make businesses much more reluctant to take anyone on without a proven track record.

One publican reckoned that, to recoup the cost of all these changes, she would need to increase the typical price of a pint by 30p. But then you run into the problem of your customers, who are experiencing similar financial pressures, being unable or unwilling to pay that, resulting in a vicious circle of diminishing returns.

The inevitable result will be that, after the Christmas and New Year period, we will see a rising tide of pub closures, and many of those still standing will be reducing staffing levels, opening hours and food service times. But the joyless wowsers, never missing an opportunity to kick a man when he is down, will still no doubt go ahead with their Dry January campaign.

And, while I have done my best to avoid making wider political points that go beyond the drinks and hospitality industry, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that we are being consigned to four and a half years of Britain being a high tax, low growth and low enterprise economy.

State of independence

“Craft beer” started to become a widely-used concept in the UK around fifteen years ago. But ever since then it has been dogged by the issue of how it is actually defined. Is it the type of beer, the kind of ingredients used, the size of the brewery, the independent status of the brewery, the ethos of the brewery, or some kind of nebulous combination of all these factors?

And then a fly in the ointment appeared, as the major international brewers started to buy up what were perceived as “craft” brands such as Camden and Beavertown. Punters might think that pint of Neck Oil comes from a hip, edgy brewery, but in fact it’s an offshoot of Heineken.

This process was described by a newspaper article as How Big Lager Crushed Britain’s Craft Beer Revolution, but that is something of a misrepresentation of describing an entirely normal business process. In any industry, when a new product category appears on the scene, existing companies will attempt to get a share of the action, either by developing their own competing products or taking over the innovators, and that is exactly what has happened in beer. Sometimes a start-up emerges from the pack to became a major competitor in its own right, as has happened with BrewDog, although I would expect them to also sell out to a major corporate in the fullness of time.

To counter the confusion created by these craft takeovers, SIBA (the Society of Independent Brewers) have launched an initiative to highlight breweries’ independent status, using an Indie Beer badge. It is open to all breweries to use this, not just members of SIBA, provided that they are genuinely independent from the control of larger corporations, and account for no more than 1% of the British beer market, indicating a production level of around 220,000 barrels a year.

There’s a lot to be said for transparency, but the question has to asked to what extent this is something that drinkers class as important. They may say in opinion surveys that they prefer beer from small independent breweries to that made by giant corporations, but their revealed preference often indicates otherwise. All they want at the end of the day is a decent pint. And this is a beer market where the majority of sales are accounted for by UK-brewed versions of international lager brands. This is not to say that people are stupid, just that independence and authenticity are not in practice given a high priority. I’d guess that most of the people to whom it really matters that Neck Oil is brewed by an offshoot of Heineken are already well aware of that fact.

It also needs to be remembered that independent status is not of itself necessarily a mark of quality, and, to be fair, it isn’t really being suggested it is. Over the years, I’ve encountered no shortage of poor products from micro-breweries, and indeed “this tastes like home brew” is a common criticism. On the other hand, while not all of their products may be to your taste, Asahi/Fullers at Chiswick, Greene King at Bury St Edmunds, and Carlsberg-Marstons at Burton and Wolverhampton are all pretty competent brewers who know what they’re doing. Beer isn’t purely a functional product, and people often take into account the wider connotations of a brand when choosing which one to buy, but it takes a certain amount of perversity to deliberately opt for an inferior product purely because it comes from a small company. There will be plenty of items in your house that were supplied by major corporations and which you have bought for practical reasons.

It was noticeable on the day that this campaign was launched that one of the first brewers to use the badge was Timothy Taylor’s, who brew the second best-selling cask ale in the country. They were followed by Arkell’s, Felinfoel and Palmer’s, three of the most conservative family brewers in the country, and known for the (in some people’s eyes) brownness and boringness of their beers. All the remaining family brewers fall comfortably within SIBA’s definition of independence, but no doubt some people will feel a little uncomfortable with this. I ran a Twitter poll showing that 85% of respondents thought they should be included, but 15% didn’t.

POLL: Would you classify long-established family brewers such as Holt’s and Robinson’s as “independent” brewers?

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) October 22, 2024

In the early days of the British craft beer movement, many of those who were most committed to it as a kind of ideological crusade saw the family brewers as embodying everything they were opposed to. This attitude has mellowed somewhat in more recent years, and only last week Timothy Taylor’s been promoting a stout made in a collaboration with Northern Monk. But it still persists, and is perhaps particularly prevalent in Greater Manchester, where the four surviving family brewers perhaps have a greater share of tied pubs than anywhere else in the country.

Only the other day, I saw some twerp on Twitter saying “I hate Robinson’s”, and the attitude is exemplified by the response to this column that I wrote for Opening Times five years ago. Some people are going to continue lumping Batham’s and Hook Norton in with “big beer”, and when they see Shepherd Neame using the Indie Beer badge will mutter darkly “this isn’t what it’s supposed to mean!”

And it would be a splendid piece of trolling if Samuel Smith’s, who describe themselves in their publicity as being “a small, independent brewery” also decided to adopt the Indie Beer badge.

A bit of sprucing up

Earlier this month, the Nursery Inn in Heaton Norris, Stockport, reopened after a £250,000 refurbishment by Hydes Brewery. This, which is my local pub, has a splendid unspoilt interior dating from 1939, and was CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year in 2002, one of the very few brewery tied houses ever to win this award. It is also one of the handful of pubs to retain its own bowling green still in active use.

I wrote in 2013 about my experiences of visiting this pub on Sunday lunchtimes over the years. It was once extremely popular but, despite receiving an earlier refurbishment in 2014, for various reasons its fortunes seem to have declined more recently. A couple of years ago, I remember one of the Hydes directors telling a CAMRA meeting that they would have to make major changes to the pub to revive it, but were being held back by planning constraints. Several of those present expressed concern about what this would mean for its historic interior.

However, as a Grade II listed building – and also meriting a three-star entry on CAMRA’s National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors – the scope for structural change was very limited. It seems that what Hydes have done has respected the pub’s fabric, and could best be described as a general refresh and reupholstering, although there may have been more far-reaching changes behind the scenes, such as in the kitchen.

The two photos above show the main lounge and the vault. The lounge retains its wood panelling, bench seating and original stained glass windows, but has acquired some overlarge rectangular tables, although I suppose that is seen as necessary for the food trade.

However, it’s hard to see what difference the changes are going to make to the pub’s fortunes. The pub is in a tucked-away location and thus has no passing trade*, so it depends on a combination of either being a local or attracting customers as a destination for attractions such as food or live music.

The cask ale range has been cut back to Hydes’ three regular paler ales, Original, Hopster and Lowry, and the number of handpumps reduced. Neither of their two milds, Dark Ruby and 1863, are now sold and there appears to be no room to add seasonal beers, which it also sold in the past.

The initial food selection seems to major on variations on a theme of pie, mash and gravy, which is fairly limiting, whereas previously it had an extensive and varied menu. Whether a wider choice will be introduced in future remains to be seen, but I would say an attractive food offer is important to the pub’s appeal.

As the photo of the lounge shows, the pub also to my mind suffers from the presence of a large screen for TV sport in every room. I recognise that sport does bring customers in, but surely in a pub with three large rooms there should be scope for one of them not to have a screen, or for it not to be generally used. As I said in the blogpost, I don’t want to have to check the football fixtures before venturing out to my local pub. It also seems incongruous in the context of the historic interior.

So it remains to be seen whether the changes at the Nursery are going to do enough to bring customers flooding back in.

Meanwhile, a few miles away in Cheadle Hulme, Star Pubs and Bars have recently spent no less than £350,000 on refurbishing the Hesketh, which had been closed for over a year. This is anpther large suburban pub, in this case Edwardian, that once had a bowling green until it was replaced by a car park in the 1970s. I have to say that I hadn’t been in for many years prior to its closure, but I got the impression that it was a mainly food-oriented operation.

It now comes across as a fairly standard contemporary pubco refurbishment, with hard wooden floors, wide open spaces, pastel colours and an abundance of posing tables. This extract from the news story gives a flavour of what it is like.

Meanwhile, the layout will include a new games area with illuminated darts, pool table, HD TV, open fire and high tables and stools; a dining area with wood burner; and a bar with a mix of free standing and new leather button back banquette style seating.

The pub's food menu will feature pub classics such as burgers, fish and chips and grilled steak, gammon and chicken. A home comforts section will include dishes like Steak & Ale Pie, Hunter Chicken and Mac n Cheese. There will also be a choice of 'world favourites' such as Singapore Noodles, Tacos and Chicken Tikka Masala, lighter bites, and a small plates offering with a mix-and-match tapas style way of eating.

The drinks offer will include a range of beers, from Fosters, Amstel and Birra Moretti to Beavertown. There will also be cider, wine, an extensive range of spirits, zero alcohol and soft drinks and fresh coffee.

Nothing particularly objectionable, but on the other hand nothing to make it stand out from many other pubs either. Cheadle Hulme is a prosperous, leafy area with many long-established residents, and I can’t help feeling that the potential clientele might expect something a little more sophisticated, such as might be found in three nearby J. W. Lees pubs, Duttons, the Pointing Dog or the Aviator.

The cask ale offer is Theakston’s Best and Taylor’s Landlord. Some in CAMRA grumbled about the limited choice, but arguably it makes sense to tailor the range to suit the level of trade, and the pint of Theakston’s I had was pretty good. As in many pubs of this kind, there is something of a tension between TV sport and dining.

So, while a tidy sum of money has been invested, it still comes across as a “pub by numbers” without any distinctive USP, and it remains to be seen whether it will prove to be a success in the longer term. Being the only pub for half a mile in any direction is no longer a guarantee of success, if indeed it ever was.

* the concept of “passing trade” refers not only to chance customers happening to pass a pub and thinking they will call in, but passing it on their regular journeys and thus being aware of its existence.

It's no joke

The Sunday Telegraph reports that pub licensees will be turned into “banter cops” under proposed reforms to workers’ rights.

Provisions in the Employment Rights Bill mean equality laws will be updated to make employers liable for staff being offended by “third parties”, such as customers or members of the public. The laws would introduce a legal requirement for companies and public bodies to take “all reasonable steps” to prevent harassment by third parties relating to a “protected characteristic” such as sex, gender reassignment or age.

Some commentators have dismissed this as merely protecting staff from direct harassment, but to a large extent that is already covered by existing legislation. This goes much further to encompass offence called by anything that employees might overhear. Pubs cover a wide spectrum, and many have a distinctly robust and rumbustious atmosphere where there may be plenty of humour and banter that would never be encountered on broadcast media. Some sensitive soul working behind the bar could all too easily take offence at a particular joke and run to the solicitors.

If a particular line of conversation, such as maybe something of a sexually frank nature, or laced with four-letter words, makes people feel uncomfortable, then the correct response should be a word from the licensee to tone it down rather than recourse to the law. But it all depends on the character of that particular establishment. Not every pub is suitable for maiden aunts.

Industry spokesperson Kate Nicholls, who aims to influence policy-makers and thus always has to speak guardedly, sounded a note of caution:

Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said that staff in restaurants, bars, pubs and hotels are working in a “social environment” where “there are jokes and people are boisterous”. She said while everyone wants to make sure their staff are protected “we don’t want to be policing our customers’ behaviour”, adding that she is keen to work with ministers to ensure “undue restrictions” are not imposed on customers.

This may in the end not amount to much, but the risk is that one or two high-profile lawsuits will force venues to take a risk-averse approach and try to eliminate that anything that may be offensive to the ear of the listener. Maybe pubs need to take a leaf out of the BBC’s book from 1948 and publish a list of topics that are considered unsuitable for humour. They could consult Humphrey Smith for advice.

“the BBC thought jokes about lavatories, fig leaves and ladies' underwear would be too strong for public consumption… Any references to drink were permissible only ‘in strict moderation’… the BBC also put a ban on suggestive references to dangerous subjects such as honeymoon couples, chambermaids, rabbits, lodgers and commercial travellers. Writers had to avoid vulgar use of words such as ‘basket’.”

It goes well beyond humour and conversational banter to extend to the policing of opinions. Free speech seems to be increasingly becoming a dirty word, and we often see examples of “no-platforming” and violent demonstrations against speakers expressing controversial but entirely legal views. This will mainly affect venues such as theatres and conferences centres, but pubs are not entirely immune, especially if they have meeting rooms that are used to host various events.

What are the chances that some delicate member of staff will raise an objection if they hear such horrendous opinions being expressed as “no woman has a penis”, “Israel has the right to self-defence” or “there is no climate crisis”?

Nobody should have the right to be protected from offence, provided that speech falls within the law. Some environments by their nature are host to a robust discourse, and anyone of a censorious nature should perhaps consider whether they are appropriate places for them to work. If you don’t like blood, don’t work in a butcher’s shop. But there is a genuine risk that, in an effort to live a quiet life and avoid vexatious litigation, this legislation will throw a stifling blanket over free expression.

Undone by progress

In July of this year, Marston’s sold their remaining 40% stake in the Carlsberg-Marston’s brewing joint venture to Carlsberg, ending a long and proud history of the company’s involvement in brewing. Reducing their debt burden was given as a key reason behind this move. Not entirely surprisingly, three months later, Carlsberg announced that they were closing the Wolverhampton brewery that they had acquired from the joint venture, with operations being concentrated at the original Marston’s site at Burton-on-Trent. This was particularly poignant as Wolverhampton was the birthplace of the Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries company that eventually metamorphosed into Marston’s.

The history behind this is somewhat complicated. In 1999, Wolverhampton & Dudley, best known for Banks’s ales, took part in a bitter two-way takeover battle with Marston’s, with each company trying to take over the other. Wolves & Dudley were eventually successful, but only at the cost of taking on a huge burden of debt that was later to prove a millstone around their neck. In 2007, the combined company renamed itself as Marston’s, as that was a much more widely recognised name.

The debt burden was further increased by takeovers of the Jennings, Wychwood and Ringwood breweries, and then in 2017 of the large Eagle Brewery at Bedford, previously owned by Wells & Youngs. By this time, commentators were noting that its level of debt put it in a risky position, and the 2020 Covid lockdown brought the house of cards crashing down. With all pubs closed, the level of brewing activity greatly diminished, and the company’s share price plummeted. The disposal of 60% of the brewing activities to Carlsberg was somewhat in the nature of a fire sale, to prevent the company being overwhelmed by its debt obligations. The sale of the remaining 40% stake four years later only completed the process.

Even before this, it had been widely speculated that one of the two large breweries would have to close sooner or later. I’d assume that the decision was motivated by considerations that Burton, on an edge-of-town site, had more room for expansion, while Wolverhampton, close to the city centre, would fetch more for redevelopment. While the Wolverhampton site is superficially impressive, I went round it on a tour in 2018 and found the actual brewing and fermenting operations surprisingly cramped and haphazard. It wasn’t really a state-of-the-art modern brewery.

Inevitably, the decision was met with a great amount of sadness, but also a certain degree of anger. Labour’s recently-elected West Midlands condemned the decision and urged the company to reconsider.

This is a cultural asset lost because of decisions made on paper - without consideration for the impact on our community. We should be protecting our brewing heritage in Wolverhampton. I'm urging the owners to reconsider.https://t.co/TatIwxo7dn

— Richard Parker (@RichParkerLab) October 10, 2024

However, many of the responses to his tweet suggested he might be better employed concentrating has attention on stopping library closures in Birmingham rather than a brewery closure in Wolverhampton. It’s also noticeable that many of the people decrying the closure are the same who have over the years dismissed the beers produced by the plant as bland, mainstream pap.

Carlsberg are running a commercial business, not a preservation society, and there is limited scope for sentiment. In the fact of declining demand, operating two large ale breweries only 30 miles apart in Staffordshire simply did not make financial sense, and rationalising capacity was inevitable. They may give cause for lament, but I doubt whether over the past sixty years there has ever been a single brewery closure decision that those making it have later regretted in commercial terms. When a pub closes, there is the opportunity for customers to put their money where their mouth is and club together to buy it, but that simply isn’t an option for a large brewery supplying thousands of pubs.

The decline in ale demand is an unfortunate fact of life that companies have to come to terms with. Cask ale is now below 10% of the on-trade beer market, and a year or so ago my local giant Tesco about halved the amount of shelf space devoted to Premium Bottled Ales, slashing the number of lines stocked at the same time. Kent brewer Shepherd Neame recently announced a shift of emphasis from cask to craft in the face of falling sales.

Some may point out that certain smaller breweries and cask-focused pubs are going great guns and increasing sales, but an overall declining market does not affect everyone equally, and the wider picture is pretty clear. The founding members of CAMRA feared that real ale might only survive in a limited, cottage industry form and, fifty years later, that may eventually be coming to pass, as the big operators scale down their involvement and leave it to micros and small family brewers.

The topic of the Wolverhampton closure has also been discussed by Tandleman here.

The 3.4% dilution

I recently spent a few days in Taunton in Somerset. While it’s an interesting place, and a good base for exploring the surrounding area, it has to be said that it’s far from Britain’s best pub town. One that I visited was the Ring of Bells which, for some reason, more than three years after the end of lockdowns, is still operating a policy of table service and card payments only. I asked the waiter what guest ales were available, and he ran through the list. One from Otter sounded promising, so I asked what strength it was. “Oh, 3.4%,” he replied. So I decided to give it a swerve and choose something else. And that illustrates one of the key problems with 3.4% beers, that nobody really wants them.

Just over a year ago, at the beginning of August 2023, the duty on beers of 3.4% ABV or below was more than halved. Since then, predictably, huge swathes of the British beer market that were previously above this figure have seen their strength reduced. This includes Greene King IPA, Ruddles Bitter, Carlsberg lager (outside of Wetherspoon’s) and all four of the leading brands of smooth bitter. However, again predictably, most of the savings seem to have gone to brewers rather than pub operators or drinkers. Drinkers have’t asked for this; it has been entirely driven by tax savings.

Before the First World War, the typical strength of British beer was between 5 and 6%. However, during that conflict, a shortage of barley combined with steep duty increases imposed by Lloyd George brought about a drastic reduction in its strength. For the next four decades at least, Britain had some of the weakest beer in the world. However, in a more sober era, this was generally accepted, and beer was seen more as a gentle lubricant to sociability, or a means of replacing fluid for manual workers, rather than something that would get you drink. As Anthony Avis wrote in his memoir about the history of the British brewing industry, “All the Norwich brewed beers, before and after the last war, were much the same – thin, flat and lifeless; however, they suited, or appeared to suit, the customers.”

There was a significant change in 1959 when, for the first time in many years, beer duty was reduced, and this was the catalyst for a major change in the beer market. In the early 1960s, Mild was still the biggest seller, but from the on Bitter, which was typically stronger and had more character, pulled ahead, and eventually reduced Mild to insignificance.

More, recently, while we may not have been drinking “less but better”, we are certainly drinking “less but a bit stronger”. Most of the best-selling cask ales are now in the 4.0-4.5% ABV range, and the most popular lagers seem to cluster around the 4.5-4.6% mark. The 4.6% Moretti recently overtook the 4.0% Carling as the biggest-selling lager in the UK. There is no spontaneous market trend to favour 3.4% beers.

CAMRA has always had a tendency to sentimentalise low-gravity beers. But the truth is that most of these milds and light bitters were thin, bland and forgettable, and were simply drunk without much thought as part of a routine of social interaction. Nobody much mourns Whitbread West Country Pale Ale, the 1030 OG beer that for many years was the only cask ale in many pubs around the Severn Valley. The limited number that have survived to the present day tend to be the more characterful examples, and many of them are actually over 3.4% anyway.

In the 1950s and 60s, when people just tended to drink the house mild or bitter in a limited range of pubs, a reduction in strength would in general have been grudgingly accepted, as they had nowhere else to go. Even today, the drinkers of products like John Smith’s Smooth are likely to be creatures of habit, and a reduction from 3.6% to 3.4% won’t be enough to make them look elsewhere. Reducing a beer’s strength by only one or two points will make little appreciable difference.

But today’s beer market is much more open and fluid than it was a generation or two ago, and if presented with a range of options drinkers are unlikely to opt for the weakest one. This isn’t because they’re chasing strength for its own sake, but that 3.4% beers are in general a bit lacking. As I wrote about the John Smith’s reduction, “A 3.4% beer can be sort of OK, palatable enough, although it’s unlikely to uproot any trees.”

I recognise that I am not a remotely representative beer drinker. At home, I’m not the kind of person to work his way through a pile of cans while watching TV, and generally I just want the one. While I do buy beers down to around 4.0%, I really wouldn’t want a 3.4 unless it either came as part of a multipack or someone had given it to me.

In the pub, things are slightly different as I’m more likely to have a multi-pint session, and there is also more of a reason to maintain a relatively clear head. I might well choose a 3.4% beer where that strength is appropriate to its traditional character, such as Taylor’s Golden Best or one of the two Sam Smith’s milds. Although it has been (perhaps puzzlingly) kept at 3.5%, the 1863 light mild is often my choice in Hyde’s pubs. However, if presented with a choice of guest or seasonal ales, something that was only 3.4% would be unlikely to pique my interest. Plus there is rarely much, if any, saving on the price.

The conclusion must be that, while a substantial part of the beer market has now been brought down to 3.4%, it is a trend that has been entirely driven by tax considerations, not consumer preference. And is it really a healthy situation where so much of what is on offer is not what drinkers really want?

Chippy about chips

Plans for a new chippy on a North Wales holiday park have met with opposition from the local health board:

Plans for a new chippy have come up against a health board's demands for fruit and veg on the menu. Betsi Cadwaladr health board wants the proposed takeaway in Morfa Bychan, Gwynedd, to sell a "good selection" of fruit and veg. It wants the menu to have less fat, salt and sugar and is worried an increase in fast food outlets is "detrimental" to people's health.

The more junk food was available, the board added, the more likely it was that people would get fat. "Increased access to unhealthy food retail outlets can be associated with increased weight status in the general population and increased obesity and unhealthy eating behaviours among children residing in low-income areas," it said. "While we appreciate this is only one extra takeaway unit, this would still be one additional takeaway than what is currently available."

But the question has to be asked what business is it of theirs anyway? Are they going to go through the complete menus and stock range of every single retail outlet to decide whether they meet with their approval?

It also isn’t made clear whether they want the chippy to also function as a greengrocer’s shop, something completely unheard of in takeaways, or whether they want more fruit and veg to be included on the menu, whether or not customers actually want them. But don’t expect them underwrite any losses incurred from stocking items people don’t want to buy.

It also seems distinctly hypocritical when many NHS facilities have vending machines full of crisps, chocolate bars and fizzy drinks, which presumably are items they disapprove of. Plus, in my experience, many NHS staff do not set a good example of keeping to an ideal weight.

This is yet another example of joyless, po-faced, Puritanical bureaucrats who have no conception of how businesses function trying to dictate how they should operate, and how ordinary people should live their lives, something that seems all too common nowadays.

And don’t mushy peas qualify as vegetables anyway?

Passing on the torch

It had been widely rumoured, but it has now been officially confirmed that Humphrey Smith, long-standing Chairman of Samuel Smith’s Brewery, is to stand down in December of this year when he reaches the age of 80. He will be succeeded by his 36-year-old son Samuel, who has already been running the company’s London estate.

It must be said that this news will not provoke many tears, as Humphrey has been, to say the least, a controversial character, and some of his actions have seemed downright perverse. He has imposed draconian and offputting house rules in his pubs, he has gained a reputation for treating his staff in an arbitrary and high-handed manner, and he has kept many properties, both licensed and unlicensed, closed for many years, sometimes stretching into decades, partly due to the difficulties he has experienced in recruiting suitable managers for his pubs.

How much of a change the new regime will bring remains to be seen, but surely there must be some relaxation in the house rules, in particular allowing the use of mobile phones and other devices. It would not be unreasonable to expect them to be kept on silent and for any animated conversations to be taken outside, but it is ludicrous to prevent a customer even checking the times of their trains home. Apparently in London this rule is largely ignored, and maybe Sam will extend this approach to the rest of the estate. Personally I would also allow well-behaved dogs into their rural pubs, as this must be a major factor putting potential customers off. The company showed that they could change in response to commercial pressures when they finally began to accept card payments in the Autumn of 2022.

The most important issue, though, must be sorting out the recruitment of managers, which is the key bottleneck that is keeping so many of their pubs closed. I have heard it said that they will only recruit child-free married couples, which must greatly reduce the pool from which they can draw, although I have seen some examples where single-handed licensees appear to be in charge. The level of remuneration is probably on the stingy side too. They could also consider using relief managers to keep pubs open, as every time a pub is closed for a prolonged period you inevitably lose some customers permanently.

The question is often raised as to whether they could widen their appeal by introducing a second cask beer alongside Old Brewery Bitter. In the past they have tried this with the lighter Tadcaster Bitter, and the strong, heavy Museum Ale, but I think have only offered OBB for a good thirty years now. It isn’t clear exactly what type of beer would sell in sufficient volumes alongside OBB. Possibly in the current climate a paler, hoppier beer in the 4.1-4.5% ABV range, rather like a diluted version of the keg India Ale, would be the best candidate, but it has to be remembered that Sam’s pubs tend to appeal to a conservative clientele, not beer geeks.

Despite all these problems, it has to be said that Sam’s pubs, when they are open, have a very distinctive appeal that is not matched by any of their competitors. They offer comfortable seating, traditional décor with plenty of dark wood, an absence of TV sport and piped music, and only admit children if dining, making their wet-led pubs adults-only. They are oases of calm. They may not offer the widest choice of beer, or the absolute best beer, but in many locations they are the most congenial pubs around. As Anthony Avis said in his reflections on the British brewing industry: “The custom is aimed at the older person, who relishes a good pint, with home-produced food if he wants it, and the surroundings to sit down and talk with his companions in unfashionable comfort – just like the brewery industry advertising of forty years ago represented pubs to be.”

Hopefully Humphrey’s successor will recognise this uniqueness and proceed cautiously in making any changes. As I said when I wrote about introducing card payments a couple of years ago:

Humphrey Smith is now in his late seventies, and one can only hope that when the time comes that his successors will respect the company’s distinctive heritage and appeal while removing the obstacles that deter people from both visiting their pubs and working for them. But there must be a nagging fear that they will end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The Last of England

The past three months have seen a deluge of policy proposals being floated that, either directly or indirectly, would be damaging to the pub trade. While it’s likely that most of these ideas will never be implemented, some of them will be, and the desired direction of travel is all too clear.

There is a well-known quotation from Hilaire Belloc, reproduced in the sidebar of this blog, that: “When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.” This has prompted this particularly apposite and poignant article from Madeline Grant entitled When the last pub calls last orders it will be the last of England. I don’t propose to reproduce it in full (although I can send you the text if you send me an e-mail), but this excerpt is especially relevant.

Yet even here there is a melancholy sense to the average pub that has lingered since Covid. A pincer movement of cultural changes – the death of lunchtime drinking, the rise of clean living – now coupled with a government of an obvious puritanical bent, has created a perfect storm for pub owners.

Courtesy of the Government and their like-minded pals in public health we have heard pitches for two-thirds-sized pints and shorter pub opening hours – all within the last week. Rachel Reeves is reportedly considering an alcohol duty hike to plug the famed £22 billion “black hole”. Before that proposed smoking bans in beer gardens prompted ire from landlords…

…Indeed, Sir Keir and his acolytes seem unable to grasp why anyone would frequent a pub at all, ignoring their important social purpose. People come there to gossip and to moan, to make jokes and let loose, for conviviality and companionship. None of those are things the Starmers and the Gwynnes of this world can understand.

Undoubtedly many government policies, in particular the smoking ban, have damaged the pub trade, but the reality is that it has been undone by long-term social change. Pubgoing was never a specific destination social event, it was a habit that was woven into the fabric of everyday life. As I wrote last year:

In the past, a lot of drinking in pubs was centred around ritual and routine, often linked to the workplace. But all those Friday lunchtime drinks with the office team, after-work unwinders, Sunday lunchtime sessions and “I always go out with Bill and Frank for a few on Friday night” are now much diminished if not virtually extinct. If you’re no longer going to the pub out of habit, but have to make a positive choice to do so, you may well decide not to bother.

Added to this, there has been a growing trend to stigmatise even the moderate consumption of alcohol in social settings, which inevitably reduces the range of occasions on which people will consider a visit to the pub.

Some commentators may make the point that specific pubs are thriving, but that doesn’t mean that they can be taken as an example for others to follow. Within an overall declining market, the effect will not be even across the board, and it’s entirely possible that some venues that happen to be particularly well-located, or that cater for a specific niche, will continue to do well.

Many pubs have turned to food to keep alive, and indeed food has always been an integral part of the pub scene. However, there comes a point where it becomes so dominant that the pub has ceased to fulfil its original function and has become to all intents and purposes a restaurant.

Some industry representatives are keen to point the finger of blame at the rise of the off-trade, but in reality that is just the other side of the coin of the social changes that have led to the decline of pubs. Any moves to impose further curbs on the off-trade are unlikely to bring a single extra customer back into pubs. Both camps should realise they have a common interest in opposing anti-alcohol Puritanism.

It’s probably apocalyptic to talk of pubs completely disappearing by 2084. There will remain some demand for them. But it is clear that the tide is currently running strongly against them, and any moves by the government to impose new restrictions on them are only going to accelerate this trend.

Every little bit of advice helps

The Daily Telegraph reports that Tesco are contemplating using data collected via Clubcards to issue health messages to shoppers:

Tesco could use Clubcard data to warn shoppers when they are buying too many unhealthy items, its chief executive has said. The boss of Britain’s biggest supermarket said he expected to use artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor how customers were shopping to help “nudge” people into making healthier choices.

Tesco’s Ken Murphy said: “I can see it nudging you, saying: ‘look, I’ve noticed over time that in your shopping basket your sodium salt content is 250pc of your daily recommended allowance. I would recommend you substitute this, this and this for lower sodium products to improve your heart health’.” He said this was “very simple stuff” which could “really improve people’s daily lives”.

Some people might welcome a little friendly advice along these lines, but many others will regard it as a somewhat sinister, Big Brother-like intrusion into their privacy. There is also the issue of needing to see each trolley-load in context. It’s entirely possible, for example, that someone might buy fresh food at a market, and only use the supermarket for packaged items, which could lead the algorithm to conclude they had an unhealthy lifestyle. And that slab of Madri might not be all for your own consumption. I doubt whether the shopper depicted in this cartoon strip would find favour…

I regularly shop at Tesco, and have had a Clubcard for many years. I recognise that it involves some sacrifice of privacy, but as long as the data is anonymised and it doesn’t trigger third-party advertising it’s a compromise I’m prepared to make. I get a voucher for a few quid every three months, and sometimes they send me coupons for money off things I actually buy.

However, they don’t really have a proper handle on my shopping habits. From time to time, they send me vouchers offering £6 off if I spend £40, but the big catch is that this excludes alcoholic drinks. Not that I buy nothing else, but my regular bill is nothing like that, and if I’m splashing out a bit at Christmas the odds are that I’ll want to include a nice bottle of wine or malt, possibly as a present for someone else.

More recently, they have started offering in-store discounts to Clubcard holders, including the multibuy offers such as four bottles of beer for £7. This comes across as a slightly unethical tactic to encourage people to sign up for Clubcards, but as long as I actually have one it works to my benefit.

However, I’ve thought in the past that if they started sending me discount coupons for vegetables, I would cut it up. What I choose to buy is none of their business, and delivering patronising lectures on my shopping habits would be completely unacceptable. If they introduce this system, and there isn’t the ability to opt out, then I would have to accept that my weekly shopping might cost me a bit more. Although I would probably then be motivated to regularly use Aldi or Lidl, who don’t bother with loyalty cards at all.

Another day, another ban

On the morning after the General Election result I posted this tweet, which I really should frame, as I fear it will become only too prophetic.

The previous government did not have a good record on issues of lifestyle restriction, but it seems as though, as I expected, their replacements are greatly quickening the pace. It seems that hardly a day goes by without some further ban or curb being proposed. First we had the plan to outlaw smoking in pub gardens, and last week we saw both a proposal to ban “junk food” advertising on TV before 9 pm – and entirely on social media – and to prevent pubs using glasses bearing the logos of beer brands.

These are both issues on which I have commented before, and I don’t really propose to waste my breath going over the same ground again and again. The “junk food” advertising ban will inevitably encompass many foods generally regarded as “healthy”, while the alcohol logo ban is part of a much wider plan to restrict alcohol marketing and publicity.

Some of the thinking behind this plans is exposed in this extract from a report recently quoted in this tweet by Christopher Snowdon:

Rather than being welcomed as valued partners in the national enterprise, the alcohol industry and much of the food industry will be branded as “Unhealthy Commodity Industries” which are seen as a pernicious influence on public life. They will be at best grudgingly tolerated and excluded from any voice in policy-making. Huge swathes of the economy, also extending to sectors such as tobacco, gambling, car manufacture, oil and much of travel, will be condemned as essentially undesirable. The Scotch whisky industry, who are often celebrated as Scotland’s biggest export earner, cannot be remotely happy with this framing. And pubs, as retailers of alcohol, will inevitably be lumped in as well.

You have to wonder what motivates people to take this joyless and restrictive approach. Are they completely unable to appreciate the pleasures that can be gained from consuming alcoholic drinks or food, let alone enjoying these activities in convivial company? As H. L. Mencken famously said, “A Puritan is someone who lives in mortal fear that somewhere, sometime, someone is enjoying himself.” It is worth reproducing in full this well-known quote from C. S. Lewis, which is usually only seen in abbreviated form:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

The final sentence is particularly important, as it underlines how this approach is essentially infantilising people rather than treating them as responsible adults who can be trusted to take charge of their own lives.

A sinking craft

Over the past decade or so there have been endless discussions around the subject of trying to define “craft beer”. Was it a question of the style of the beer, the nature of the ingredients, the size of the plant making it, whether it was free from control of big corporations, the socio-political stance of the brewery? Or maybe some kind of intangible combination of all these factors. While it was often a case of “you know it when you see it”, it was impossible to pin down a watertight definition.

I recently came across an interesting blogpost from Jeff Alworth about how the concept of “craft beer” has effectively now become misleading and redundant.

“Craft beer” is a conceptual cul de sac. We started using it with good intentions, but with a naïveté about how brewing works and how markets function. It now causes more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t have any problem with the Brewers Association using the terms in their marketing—I certainly would if I were them—but we should recognize it for what it is. I encourage members of the media to consider using different language. It will make us all understand beer better.

He also says:

It is very important for both the health of a market and for the culture of beer to have small family breweries. They don’t have to cater to lowest common denominator tastes. They develop new styles and preserve old traditions from the ravages of industrialization. I am a giant fan of little breweries!

But they are just breweries. They just make beer. And, for what it’s worth, big breweries also just make beer. In using the “craft” framework, I think people got into the habit of thinking that what happened in large plants was some kind of industrial-scale chemical synthesis, not brewing. That was wrong as well, and led to other misconceptions.

Any attempt to arbitrarily sort breweries into sheep and goats is doomed to failure. If you deliberately choose only to drink beer from small breweries, or from breweries who take a particular public political stance, that’s up to you. But don’t pretend it’s actually anything to do with the nature of the beer in the glass. It’s all shades of grey rather than black and white.

It was often implied in the early days of CAMRA that real ale came from small artisanal breweries and was made from wholesome natural ingredients, whereas keg beer was made from chemicals in plants resembling oil refineries. It was an appealing myth, but that’s all it ever was, and exactly the same is true today.

It is also important to remember that there is a significant differences between the US and UK beer markets, which means that what applies to one doesn’t necessarily read across to the other. In the US, virtually all smaller independent breweries had disappeared, whereas in this country we still had a stratum of established family breweries together a newer real ale producing microbrewery sector. Indeed the basic premise of the British craft movement, at least at first, was that it was about interesting beer that wasn’t real ale. They presented themselves as primarily tilting against not the giant corporations, but “real ale culture”.

The US retains a number of substantial craft breweries that have grown up in recent years and comprise the leading members of the Brewers’ Association. By contrast, in this country, most of the leading brands that are considered craft are now owned by major corporates, with the exception of BrewDog, who in a sense have become more gamekeeper than poacher anyway.

I also get the impression in this country that the appreciation of craft beer became linked to a much greater degree to a specific social identity, giving rise to the characteristically British derision directed at the “craft wanker”. Of course many people who don’t conform to this stereotype do drink craft beer, just as you don’t need to have a beard and beer gut to enjoy real ale, but it has certainly established itself in the public consciousness.

Can a copy beat the original?

After a successful introduction in Ireland, Draught Guinness 0.0 is now being rolled out in Great Britain. Both in canned and draught form, it has been one of the most successful beer launches of all time, and Guinness have had to expand production capacity at their Dublin Brewery to meet demand.

One report complained that it was only 55p a pint cheaper than the standard version, but surely that is about the kind of saving you would expect from not paying duty and the VAT on duty. It doesn’t cost any less to make, and indeed may even cost more due to the processes required for de-alcoholisation. Drinkers of alcohol-free beers have no right to expect a subsidy for being virtuous.

I wrote about the canned version last year, and concluded that, while it was “a triumph of the brewing technologist’s skill”, there was something of a sense of expectations unfulfilled about the experience of drinking it.

Draught or canned Guinness is certainly a very distinctive product in terms of its appearance, mouthfeel and taste, and the canned zero-alcohol version does a pretty good job of replicating that. From its look, and the first gulp, it’s just like a glass of standard Guinness. It’s only as you get further down that you realise something is missing, and by the time you reach the bottom of the glass you’re left with something rather dull and forgettable.

You end up feeling rather like this unfortunate cat.

So successful has Guinness 0.0 been that they have been suggestions that, given time, it could overtake the original alcohol-containing product. However, I would suggest this is part of the excessive hype surrounding alcohol-free beer, and there are two key reasons why it’s vanishingly unlikely to happen.

The first is that, however good Guinness 0.0 is, it can only ever be a diminished echo of the original product. It only exists because standard Guinness exists, just as decaffeinated coffee exists because of normal coffee. There are entirely valid reasons why people, in some circumstances, might want to drink alcohol-free beers, but all they are doing is part-way replicating the experience of normal beer.

And, never having known what normal beer is like, it becomes something of a meaningless activity. Someone might drink alcohol-free beer to join in a social occasion with their boozing friends, but there will come a tipping point when they think “Hey, Bob’s now the only one of us who’s actually drinking. Why are we even doing this?”

The second is that, while it tends of be downplayed in marketing and writing about beer, the key reason people drink it is not so much because of taste or refreshment, but because it has an effect on you. Not so much getting drunk as a gentle warm feeling, a slight relaxation of inhibitions and a stimulant to conversation. It can be seen as a social lubricant.

Alcohol-free beer can never do this, and so its original promise is never fulfilled. People are never going to go on alcohol-free pub crawls, unless tagging along with drinkers, and nor are they going to seek out obscure examples of artisanal alcohol-free beers. There are connoisseurs of fine teas and coffees, but those are natural products, whereas alcohol-free beer is by definition highly processed.

There is no doubt some scope for further expansion of the alcohol-free beer market, but ultimately it will inevitably hit a ceiling.

As a complete aside, a good example of the copy overtaking the original is the TV sitcom “Allo! Allo!”, which was originally a parody of the serious drama “Secret Army”, but ended up far surpassing it in terms of longevity and viewing figures.

Something must be done

As I mentioned in my post about the pub garden smoking ban, the government are now also threatening the drinks industry with Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP). The headline is misleading, as the pub sector would, for now, be largely immune from this, but the intention is very clear. I have written about this at length over the years, mainly in the content of Scotland, where it was introduced in 2018. The conclusion, as set out in the Scottish government’s own report, was that it had done little or nothing to reduce problem drinking and had, as many of us had predicted, led to undesirable side-effects. The main underlying motivation for the policy seems to punish and denormalise ordinary, moderate drinkers by increasing the price of a modest, everyday pleasure. It has the same logic as increasing the price of petrol as a strategy to improve road safety.

It is disappointing that many in the pub trade seem to believe that MUP would be a desirable policy. However, under any scenario it would still leave off-trade drinks much cheaper than those in the on-trade, so the idea that it might prompt a switch in drinking habits does not stand up to analysis. Indeed it could be argued that it might harm pubs by squeezing household budgets and leaving them with less disposable income.

Their motivation seems to be more a case of wanting to spite the off-trade who they perceive as rivals. However, most people divide their drinking allegiance between the two depending on circumstances, so it isn’t a binary choice between one or the other. In reality, the enemy of both is the public health lobby. It’s rather like the communists and anarchists being at each other’s throats during the Spanish Civil War, which only served to benefit Franco.

Something that tends not to be appreciated is that MUP is actually a policy that plays into the hands of the off-trade, as it in effect allows them to operate a government-sanctioned price fixing ring, something that most businesses yearn for, but is generally outlawed by competition law. The price elasticity of alcoholic drinks is well below 1, so, while they may lose some sales, they will more than make up for it through fatter margins on the drinks they do sell. It will give them more incentive to promote the sale of alcoholic drinks, as they will generate more profit per square foot, and it may also give them the opportunity to raise the prices of premium products to maintain a differential. Because of this, the drinks industry in general tends to be fairly relaxed about it. The people it really does hurt are drinkers of modest means.

The government have demanded that the industry do more to “tackle the harms of drinking”. However, as long as alcohol is sold legally, some people are going to abuse it. The only way they can completely eliminate any responsibility is to stop producing and selling alcohol entirely. In recent years, the industry has promoted a number of initiatives aimed at reducing the harms of alcohol, including setting up the Portman Group to monitor irresponsible advertising, and DrinkAware to advise on health risks. It has also reduced the strength of a vast array of beers and ciders.

But, however, far you go, it will never be enough for Public Health, and they will always want to go further. Appeasement only results in further demands. Surely all that should be expected of alcohol producers is that they should meet all the legal requirements placed on them. If government wants them to do more, that must be clearly set out.

The relationship between government and drinks producers is also likely to change over time. Health groups have demanded that the government ban MPs from receiving gifts from firms involved in “tobacco, alcohol and junk food”. Notice who they’re lumped in with? In future, alcohol producers will be increasing regarded not as valued contributors to a successful economy, but as pariahs involved in a “toxic trade”, who simply have to do as they are told and have no right to be consulted or involved in decision-making. There is no point in alcohol producers arguing that they are different from tobacco manufacturers, when Public Health regard them as two sides of the same coin. And yes, craft brewers, that means you too. Much of that will also be applied to retailers of alcohol such as pubs, not just to producers.

I made the point back in 2020 that, despite a lot of negative publicity, the drinks industry has in fact over the past fourteen escaped relatively lightly from the tide of lifestyle regulation. The duty escalator was abandoned, duty has been frozen in some years, and never increased above the rate of inflation, and there have been no significant restrictions on advertising and promotion.

But that is likely to change in the coming years so, over and above the pub garden smoking ban, expect to see MUP, above-inflation duty rises, severe curbs on advertising and sponsorship, display restrictions in shops, further attempts to reduce beer and cider strengths, and maybe even plain packaging. Buckle up, folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!